God Didn't Make Our Family
by Luna Tiger
Summary: From Day One, he was on his own. Kakashi has no intention of changing that. // Izumo-centric, faintlight KoIzu, Kakashi cameo


**Title**: God Didn't Make Our Family  
**Fandom**: Naruto  
- _Characters_: Izumo, Kotetsu, Kakashi (KoIzu)  
**Rating**: PG  
**Summary**: _From Day One, he was on his own. Kakashi has no intention of changing that._  
**Notes**: So even after the whole family history revelation thing during the Konoha "Pain Rumble", I still think this can fit in.

- b - e - g - i - n -

My mother had a name; it was Rie Kamizuki. Teammate of the legendary White Fang himself, right along with Daimon Kuronawa. She never brought her work home with her though, so neither the Hatakes or Kuronawa were 'family friends'. Sometimes I wondered what life would be like if she had.

Rie was a jounin. She never had a genin team, never wanted the addled responsibility of teaching children how to die. A team of brats, she often said, would only slow her down. In fact, she hated the youth, those of the younger generations. Including me. She claimed being pregnant was the most humiliating experience of her life and didn't bother saying it while I was out of earshot. The psychology working behind my mother's eyes was beyond my ability to piece together, so I gave up years ago. The one thing that still bothers me is who fathered me. Rie was a cold woman; could she even let men into her life and would men want to be, even for a night? Ten minutes? Of all the women not to use protection with....

Missions kept my mother going. They kept her mind occupied, absorbed, distracted from the functions of real life. I once asked my caretaker (a neighbor Rie left me with more times than not; I don't remember her name anymore) why my mother wasn't an ANBU member, after she died. She had to think about it, and finally said, "Possibly because ANBU don't deal with the missions she wants handle."

Sakumo Hatake committed suicide before my mother died. Rie was furious; I remember her stormy grey clouds and her snapping and her murmuring. She called him a coward and a traitor, and didn't attend his funeral. I did, because my caretaker took me along with her. I don't remember seeing Kakashi. I don't remember there being many people at all.

Rie died shortly after I became a genin. They say it was heart failure; I had to question, "What heart?" as I fought to push aside whatever lingering feelings felt for her. I was left everything of hers, as a consequence. It was either a blessing or a curse, because she was also the owner of the family's history, something she never mentioned once. That the Kamizuki come from the Land of Rain (four generations lived in the Land of Fire) and that Water Arts were their specialty.

Thanks Mom, for never talking to me.

Daimon Kuronawa disappeared, for all I knew. Only when I was older did I learn he was one of the men Sakumo fought to save on his failed mission, and failed that too. I wondered if that mattered to my mother. Daimon had no surviving family.

I was always told, when I was younger, I looked just like my mother. Our coloring was a match: eyes, skin tone, ears, and hair. I try not to think about it. I doubt my mother did either. Someone once mentioned I had a cute nose, however, and they looked nothing like my mother's tiny one. I took that as the only compliment I could truly feel more my own, something my mother didn't give me and truly felt were my own. Well, at fifteen anyhow. It's also the only thing I do mind not hiding from the world.

Not that I thought of my mother much when I became a genin; there wasn't much time. Kotetsu, Miyabe, and myself were practically bullied about by Inari-sensei (or so we claimed about the woman for years; she was a devil, but we learned better years later that a devil on the outside didn't make one on the inside). She ran us to the bone, and I wondered if my mother had asked her to kill me for her and my teammates in consequence. I had the balls to ask, after my mother died, and she simply looked at me as if I'd suddenly spoken fluent Toad, and called me a moron. I like to think that meant 'yes'.

We met Ibiki Morino through Inari-sensei, something we equally regret and are thankful for. But before then, I can count how many missions we went on that didn't include bloody gashes, a sprain, or some other injury, on one hand. She was merciless, rode us to exhaustion, and surviving her was a miracle. She helped me, privately, once I discovered my family had unique jutsu exclusive to them, much like the Nara and Yamanaka families. Scroll after scroll, she did what my mother was supposed to have done years ago. Inari Nagakura was probably the second-closest thing to a mother-figure I had, and she died protecting Kotetsu and Miyabe during a mission after we graduated to Chuunin. I was bed-ridden. You can imagine my guilt.

My mother, according to Ibiki, while not apart of the Inquisition squad, made a name for herself for being brutal with her techniques. As I found out, the Kamizuki family had an affinity for trap and capture ninjutsu, using water arts. Rie liked getting her jobs done the dirty way, even by ninja standards.

I still didn't like her, but I gave her credit where it was due.

Before Miyabe left to become a Hunter-nin, she and Kotetsu spent time developing a way to safely cross the majority of these traps, for those unexpected circumstances. Sometimes I wondered if Rie bothered to develop any such teamwork effort with Daimon or Sakumo. She probably didn't.

Her name occasionally crops up in records and scrolls. Mostly in conjunction with others, but was singled out twice, so far as I've learned. In the first tenure of the Third Hokage, Rie was close to execution for accidentally killing the Daimyou's daughter; she was aquitted of charges. The second was a footnote somewhere mentioning she was the second person to ever form a summoner contract with the foreign bear-cat clan. I've wondered, now and again, what the bear-cats were like, and how they measured up to my mother.

Sometimes I wonder where the contract scroll wound up. But I didn't dwell too much on the idea of ever seeing it; I wouldn't ever sell myself to the same creatures that performed for my mother. I doubt they would even accept me as their human coordinator.

Today I look at myself and try not to see that woman in me. I don't want to be jounin, and sometimes I think that holds Kotetsu back. We let Miyabe go to realize her greater potential, but Kotetsu says he won't go anywhere without me. I don't know why and I can never say what needs to be, so I can let him go too.

If I die, would they come to my funeral? Or would they refuse like Rie refused? I hope not. I don't want to be like her; I don't want to die like her either.

- t - i - m - e -

Izumo heard screaming through the water, incomprehensible garble buzzing under the pressure of wavering sight. The dim was obnoxious and he thought he had the energy to lift his arm and swat away its origin. He didn't hit anything, but the most of the noise was cowed by his bravado. Something enveloped his hand, however, and he couldn't pull it back to himself.

"Izumo...Izumo...can you hear me, Izumo?..."

It took time before the noise turned to words, and then he wasn't sure what to say. It hurt to breathe, half his face was a dull throb of pain, and he wasn't even sure if his fingers were working, because what he could see through the haze of disuse was the shock of white and sunshine streaming brightly into his personal space. He thought he made a sound, and if he did, it explained why his hand was gripped harder.

Kotetsu was a blurry caricature of his former self, but it cleared up quickly enough. Izumo sighed in relief. "You all right?" It came out only a little louder than a whisper.

"Not if you count worrying over your sorry ass." But Kotetsu was smiling, and that was a good sign. "You can't blame me. Who's going to do my laundry if I lose you?"

"You'll cope and learn on your own, when you're down to sweats and snow gear."

It wasn't long before the extent of the mission came to light: Kotetsu pulled a couple tendons and his back straining to carrying three people, Izumo had broken bones and severe lacerations to his body, Guri Daitama still suffered from hallucinations from a potent toxin she was poisoned with, and Fuumamaru Aoyama died just outside the Village from multiple stab wounds. But they still managed to hang onto the scroll.

"She's giving you a couple days off," Kotetsu said of the Godaime. "Then she'll be happy to whip your back to make up for all the time lost."

Izumo laughed weakly. "Is that all? She's being generous. What about you though? She have you doing my work too?"

"Of course not! She's not that kind." He grinned cheekily, and he reached out to ruffle Izumo's hair. The subject matter turned to lighter things after that, Kotetsu trying to convince Izumo the entire Village changed overnight, as if Izumo had been in a coma instead of knocked unconscious. All fun and games, the therapy of trying to forgive themselves of the poor job they had done saving their teammates, until the sloppy gait of a familiar figure ambled by, briefly stopping to look inside with a blank, one-eyed stare.

Kotetsu's chair clattered as he swung around in it, the prick of his trained senses going haywire the moment Izumo's gaze shifted from him to the door. But all he did was glare, glared his hardest to cover up Izumo's forever confusion and likely dread, until Kakashi looked away and said, "Get well soon," before sticking his nose in his orange book and moving out of sight.

"I don't like it," Kotetsu hissed. "He's been doing that for weeks now: work, outside the apartment, the market line. I think it's long past borderline stalking now."

Izumo grimaced. "What do I keep telling you? It's not an issue." It may have been, but Izumo was letting him get away with it. Never mind Kakashi was a jounin, and jounin tended to be down-right crazed, in some manners, it was probably connected to his mother, somehow. Because things were _never_ about him.

- e - y - e - s -

Kakashi leaned casually against the nurse's station, where one Tsumiko Oriba was currently planted. "Get?" he asked imploringly.

Without so much of a disturbing ripple of the airpool, Tsumiko slid a thin folder discreetly under his slightly up-lifted palm. It was in-hand when he walked away.

Outside, he pulled out the two-page paperwork, glanced it over, and slipped it back inside. He sighed loudly and glanced back over his shoulder, at the wing where Izumo and Kotetsu were probably wrestling or something Tsunade would greatly disapprove of.

The file wouldn't survive the fortnight.


End file.
